A quick look at Sitefinity Form Builder

The Sitefinity form builder allows you build any kind of form in an easy and intuitive way. The user-friendly drag-and-drop feature lets you create the layout of the forms and insert widgets and other elements without having to use any coding.

We take you through a step-by-step guide to building forms using Sitefinity.

Create Forms

You click on the “create form” on the forms page if you need to build a form from scratch.

If there are any other forms already created, the toolbar of this page will also display them.

The Input field lets you enter the name of the form or even change the default name by clicking on Change, in case of developers who then use the new name for any reference to the form in the code.

In the scenario where you have opted for Marketo Add-on, you can link the form to it in the Advanced section.

In the Create and add Content, you can add content to the form created by clicking on widgets and adding them to the form in the content editing section of the form.

In case you want to come back to the content section at a later stage, you have the option to Create and return to forms page by creating an empty form.

In case of multi-lingual forms, you can also select the language from the drop down menu on the right-hand side of the page.

Design Forms

You can add/edit content (Forms-Actions-Content) on this page using the layout builder and widgets.

Click on Layout/Content on the upper-right corner of the page to add layout or widgets respectively.

The drop down menu for each of these displays pre-defined elements that you can drag-and-drop to the desired area of the page.

You can also add restrictions to control responses to the form. For instance, to restrict the form submissions to one IP address or username, you can select the respective options of One entry per IP and One entry per username under Settings-Restrictions.

Once a form is submitted, a user needs to be intimated of the result of the action, which could either be a success message or a URL redirection, depending upon the case. These could be set under the Confirmation options under Settings.

You can choose the alignment (Top/Left/Right) of the label of elements like textboxes, multiple choices and checkboxes to place them as desired on the form.

Form widgets

Form widgets that specify the manner in which the text is displayed are available in the Content section. You drag-and-drop the form widgets like a textbox, dropdown list, paragraph box, Submit button, etc. into your form.

You could even customize a widget to suit your requirements and add it to the list in the toolbox. This step is preceded with registering the widget in the toolbox.

Editing a form

You can edit a form in two ways:

1. Edit the properties of a form (categories, title, tags, etc.)

Or

2. Edit the content of a form by changing the layout elements and form widgets.

To edit the properties of a form click on Forms-Actions and select Properties from the list.

To edit the content of a form click on Forms-Actions and select Content.

Publish or delete a form

You can choose to either Publish or Unpublish a form in one of the following ways:

Forms-More Actions-Publish/Unpublish

Forms-Actions-Publish/Unpublish

Clicking Publish or clicking on More Actions-Unpublish in the content editing mode

Similarly, you can even delete an existing form by either:

Selecting the forms on the Forms page and clicking the Delete button in the toolbar

Or

Going to the respective form and selecting Delete in the dropdown menu of the Actions link for the form.

When you create and publish a form on the website, the users can fill it out and submit their answers. The responses you get to a form are visible in the backend and you can see them via the Forms page.

Managing responses to a form

The Responses page (Forms-Responses) enables you to view the responses submitted by the users that filled out and submitted the form. The responses are all displayed in a grid wherein the columns contain information pertaining to the labels like textboxes, multiple choice answers, etc. Every line in the grid contains the number of responses along with the date of submission and the answers to the questions in the form.

• Click on Export as CSVbutton to export all the data.
• Select a part of responses by checking the boxes next to the form responses and export these to Excel by clicking the Export to Excel 
• Create a Responsebutton will create responses to the form. The artificially created response is numbered null in the list of all responses.
• Every line in the grid, when selected, allows you a preview of the form along with the responses, with the date and time stamp and IP address on the right-hand side.
• The Edit button in the response preview allows you to edit a response or its attachments.
• Delete button allows you to delete one or more responses by selecting them and clicking on Delete.

Search and Filter

There is a Search button to enable you to find a particular response. You can even filter the forms either by Ownership; by clicking My Forms under Filter Forms, by Status; by clicking Published or Drafts or even use a Special filter to list out forms that are not shared with any site.

Edit form responses on the frontend

Sitefinity 7.2 allows users to reopen and edit forms already submitted. However, there could be instances where you want to restrict the fields that can be edited by the users in the edit mode. You can make some fields read-only or completely hide them.

To open a response for editing in the frontend, you must add the specific query string that you wish to generate to the page that displays the form.

Email notifications for responses

You can enable email notifications for users who have submitted the responses through Advanced Settings tab under Administration.

You can also subscribe yourself or other users for notification via email by clicking

Content-Forms-Actions (link of the form)-Subscribe (from drop down list)

Or

Content-Forms-Settings-Send email notification for responses to-My email address-Publish

If you need any further information on form building or require assistant on other Sitefinity features or services, write to us at services@suyati.com.